Know What You’re Good At

Follow your bliss. Do what you love and the money will follow. How often do we hear these expressions? This article will give you a game plan for actually turning your passions into a lucrative career.

Everyone wants to be successful in his or her chosen career. For some, this means wealth, and for others it might mean serving others. But some people try to choose a field of study without focusing on what they love.

Study Your Likes and Dislikes

The first step toward a successful and fulfilling career is to concentrate on you. Make yourself a research project. What do you enjoy doing? What job would you perform, even if you didn’t get paid? Just as importantly, what do you dislike? Do you detest math or hate routine? This self-knowledge is just as important as knowing what you love.

You may be surprised to learn that most people’s aptitudes are determined by the age of 14, and generally do not change. Some people take aptitude tests to determine which skills and abilities they excel in using.

This could be a backwards approach, because you don’t always love doing things that you are good at. You could be adept at a skill set that is not what you truly desire to be performing, such as accounting. Many experts feel that interest assessments are a better indicator of the type of business you could build successfully.

If you lack a skill set that is essential to your perfect career, you can always pick that up. With passion as your motivator, you are more likely to succeed. However, do not ignore your strongest skills. Instead, think about how to incorporate them into your ideal career.

Why Should You Follow Your Bliss?

Here are some reasons to pick work that excites you:

• You will be more motivated, and potentially work with more focus and effectiveness
• You will feel satisfied and fulfilled at the end of the day, rather than exhausted
• You will naturally excel at whatever you do
• Your passion becomes contagious, and will spread to your clients, coworkers and the world at large.
• You will be more likely to succeed

You can also combine diverse interests to uncover compelling career possibilities. For example, if you are interested in justice and research, you might become a paralegal. If you enjoy using language in the business world, you could try copywriting.

The Planning Phase

Be sure to establish a concrete plan for planning your business, and don’t get stuck in the analysis phase. Keep your business plan simple, and plan for more financial support than you initially think that you’ll need.

You need to strike a balance between adequate preparation and getting your feet wet. A successful entrepreneur could serve as a role model to keep you on track.

This post was contributed by Kelly Austin from Higher Salary. Visit her site for information on the average accountant salary and guides to other popular careers.

This is an article contributed to Young Upstarts and published or republished here with permission. All rights of this work belong to the authors named in the article above.